Risk aversion has become the defining characteristic of modern business decision-making. In an era of economic uncertainty, rapid technological change and heightened accountability, organisations have responded by widening the circle of stakeholders involved in purchasing decisions. What once required sign-off from a single decision-maker now involves input from finance, IT, operations, compliance, end users and often the C-suite as well.

For salespeople, this shift represents a fundamental challenge. The traditional approach of identifying and courting a single champion no longer cuts it. Today’s complex buying environments demand a more sophisticated strategy: multi-threading and team selling. Yet many salespeople remain stuck in old habits, focusing their energy on one contact whilst the real decision unfolds in rooms they’re not even aware of.

1. Risk Aversion Has Changed the Buying Landscape

Businesses today are terrified of making expensive mistakes. Every significant purchase is scrutinised not just for its potential benefits, but for everything that could go wrong. This naturally leads to more people wanting a say in the decision. The IT director worries about integration risks. Finance questions the ROI assumptions. Operations frets about implementation disruption. Each stakeholder brings their own concerns and criteria, turning what should be a straightforward decision into a complex negotiation between internal parties. Salespeople who don’t recognise this reality end up blindsided when deals stall or collapse.

2. Single-Threading is a Recipe for Failure

Relying on one contact, even a seemingly powerful champion, is increasingly dangerous. That person might leave the organisation. They might lose political capital. They might simply lack the influence you assumed they had. More fundamentally, if you’re only connected to one stakeholder, you’re seeing the buying process through a single lens. You don’t know what objections are being raised elsewhere, what competing priorities exist, or where the real resistance lies. When your sole contact goes quiet or the deal mysteriously stalls, you’re left guessing rather than influencing.

3. Multi-Threading Requires Intentional Strategy

Building relationships with multiple stakeholders doesn’t happen by accident. It requires deliberate planning and execution. Salespeople need to map the decision-making unit, identifying not just the obvious players but also the influencers, blockers and end users whose opinions matter. They need to understand each stakeholder’s priorities, concerns and success criteria. Most importantly, they need legitimate reasons to engage with each person rather than making clumsy attempts to “get around” their main contact. This means creating value in every interaction, not just using people as sources of intelligence.

4. Different Stakeholders Need Different Conversations

One-size-fits-all presentations are utterly inadequate in multi-stakeholder environments. The CFO cares about financial returns and risk mitigation. The IT director worries about technical specifications and support requirements. End users want to know how it will affect their daily work. Effective multi-threading means tailoring your message and approach to each audience. It also means genuinely listening to what each stakeholder cares about rather than forcing them through your standard pitch. The salesperson who can speak credibly to diverse concerns builds trust across the organisation.

5. Team Selling Brings Credibility and Expertise

Just as buying has become a team sport, so too must selling. A single salesperson, no matter how talented, cannot credibly address every stakeholder’s concerns. This is where team selling becomes essential. Bringing in technical specialists to speak with IT, implementation experts to reassure operations, or senior executives to engage with the C-suite demonstrates that you understand the complexity of their decision. It also shows respect for each stakeholder’s expertise and concerns. Team selling done well accelerates deals by addressing objections in real time and building confidence across the organisation.

6. Collaboration Beats Confrontation in Complex Sales

In multi-stakeholder environments, a collaborative approach is far more effective than traditional “sales versus procurement” dynamics. The salesperson’s role shifts from persuader to facilitator, helping the buying team navigate their internal decision-making process. This might mean helping them build a business case, identifying concerns before they become blockers, or even advising them on how to gain internal consensus. When you position yourself as a partner in their process rather than an outsider trying to force a decision, you gain access and influence that pushy tactics never achieve.

Conclusion

The days of the lone wolf salesperson are over. In today’s risk-averse business environment, where purchasing decisions involve numerous stakeholders with competing priorities, success requires a fundamentally different approach. Multi-threading and team selling aren’t optional extras for complex deals; they’re essential capabilities for any salesperson operating in B2B environments. Organisations that continue to train their salespeople for one-to-one selling are preparing them for a world that no longer exists. The future belongs to those who can navigate complexity, build relationships across organisational boundaries, and orchestrate team-based approaches that address diverse stakeholder needs. It’s time sales organisations caught up with the reality their people face every day.

The post The New Reality: Why Solo Selling No Longer Works appeared first on Robin Lines Associates.

The result? A generation of salespeople who mistake confrontation for insight, and disruption for value. They turn up armed with pre-packaged challenges and generic industry provocations, talking at customers rather than with them. Meanwhile, the basics – genuine curiosity, active listening, and thoughtful questioning – have fallen by the wayside.

1. Challenging Without Permission is Just Arrogance

The Challenger approach works when you’ve earned the right to challenge. That means understanding your customer’s specific situation, pressures and priorities before you start dismantling their assumptions. Turning up to a first meeting and immediately telling a prospect they’re “doing it all wrong” isn’t brave or disruptive. It’s presumptuous. True insight comes from asking intelligent questions first, then offering a perspective that genuinely adds value to their thinking.

2. Disruption Must Serve the Customer, Not Your Sales Quota

Being disruptive for disruption’s sake is theatre, not selling. The point of challenging conventional thinking is to help customers see opportunities or risks they’ve missed, not to demonstrate how clever you are. Every “provocative insight” should connect directly to the customer’s goals and context. If your challenge doesn’t make them think differently about something that matters to them, it’s just noise.

3. Listening Has Become a Lost Art

Many salespeople today are so focused on delivering their pitch that they’ve forgotten how to truly listen. They’re waiting for their turn to talk rather than absorbing what the customer is actually saying. Active listening means picking up on nuances, understanding the subtext, and following threads that the customer finds important – even if they don’t fit neatly into your sales narrative. The best insights often emerge from what customers mention in passing, not from what’s in your slide deck.

4. Questions Reveal More Than Statements Ever Will

Strong questioning skills separate consultative salespeople from product pushers. Yet too many salespeople rely on surface-level discovery questions or, worse, leading questions designed to funnel customers towards a predetermined conclusion. Effective questioning requires genuine curiosity and the discipline to ask follow-up questions that go deeper. “Why is that important to you right now?” and “What happens if you don’t address this?” reveal far more than “What’s your budget?”

5. Training Has Focused on Technique Over Fundamentals

Sales training programmes have become obsessed with frameworks, methodologies and tactics. Whilst these have their place, they’re useless without solid fundamentals. New salespeople need to develop the soft skills – empathy, adaptability, communication – that allow them to read situations and respond appropriately. You can teach someone the Challenger approach, but if they can’t listen properly or ask insightful questions, they’ll just become another pushy salesperson with a fancy framework.

6. The Best Salespeople Know When Not to Challenge

Knowing when to challenge is as important as knowing how. Sometimes customers need support and validation, not disruption. Sometimes they need information, not provocation. The truly skilled salesperson can flex their approach based on what the customer needs in that moment. Being relentlessly challenging in every situation isn’t consultative selling – it’s a one-trick pony approach that alienates as many customers as it engages.

Conclusion

The Challenger Sale offered valuable insights about how top performers differentiate themselves, but it was never meant to replace the fundamentals of good selling. Being challenging works when it’s built on a foundation of excellent listening, thoughtful questioning and genuine customer focus. Without those basics, it’s just aggressive pitching dressed up in consultant-speak. Perhaps it’s time to stop obsessing over the latest sales methodology and get back to what actually works: understanding customers deeply, asking better questions, and only offering insights when we’ve truly earned the right to be heard.

The post The Challenger Sale: Lost in Translation? appeared first on Robin Lines Associates.

The challenge is compounded by how AI can encourage shortcuts that undermine genuine relationship-building. When every salesperson in your market uses similar AI-generated outreach, buyers quickly learn to spot the patterns. Add to this the continued preference for virtual meetings over face-to-face interactions, and you have a sales environment where standing out requires precisely the human skills that AI cannot replicate.

1. Empathy as a differentiator in an automated world

When buyers receive dozens of AI-polished messages each week, they develop a keen sense for what feels genuine. Empathy requires truly understanding a customer’s specific challenges, not just their industry pain points scraped from a database. Salespeople who invest time in understanding the emotional and political dynamics within a customer’s organisation create connections that algorithmic personalisation simply cannot match. This means asking better questions, listening more carefully to what isn’t said, and recognising when a prospect is under pressure even if they don’t explicitly state it.

2. Trust-building when everyone sounds the same

AI makes it trivially easy to produce professional-sounding communications, which means the bar for “good enough” content has risen dramatically. However, trust isn’t built through perfect grammar and well-structured proposals. It develops through consistency, vulnerability, and demonstrated expertise that goes beyond what any chatbot could generate. Salespeople who share genuine insights from their experience, admit when they don’t know something, and follow through on commitments build trust that becomes a sustainable competitive moat. When your competitors are all using the same AI tools to sound credible, actually being credible becomes your advantage.

3. Emotional intelligence to read the room (virtual or otherwise)

EQ has always mattered in sales, but it’s now the skill that separates top performers from the merely competent. AI can suggest what to say but cannot read micro-expressions during a video call or sense when a buying committee has unspoken concerns. Salespeople with high emotional intelligence adapt their approach based on subtle cues, know when to push and when to give space, and build rapport that feels natural rather than scripted. This skill becomes even more critical when most interactions happen through screens rather than across a desk.

4. The discipline to use AI as a tool, not a crutch

The same technology that can enhance productivity can also create lazy habits. Copy-pasting AI-generated responses, relying on automated research instead of genuine preparation, or using templates without customisation might save time but costs credibility. The best salespeople use AI to handle administrative tasks whilst reserving their energy for high-value activities that require human judgement. This means being disciplined about where automation helps and where it hinders authentic connection.

5. Making the case for face-to-face meetings

With buyers now accustomed to conducting entire purchase processes virtually, securing in-person meetings requires selling the meeting itself. Salespeople need to articulate clear, customer-focused value for why travelling to meet is worth everyone’s time. This isn’t about your preference for face-to-face interaction but about demonstrating how complex problems are better solved collaboratively in person, how building deeper relationships accelerates future decisions, and how certain conversations are simply more productive without the barrier of a screen.

6. Structuring meetings that justify the investment

Once you’ve earned that face-to-face meeting, making it valuable from the customer’s perspective is non-negotiable. This requires thorough preparation, clear objectives agreed in advance, and facilitation skills that ensure productive dialogue rather than one-way presentations. The meeting should leave customers feeling it was time well spent, not a session they could have handled over Zoom.

Conclusion

The proliferation of AI in sales hasn’t made human skills obsolete. Rather, it has made them more valuable and more visible. In a world where everyone has access to the same technological advantages, your humanity is what sets you apart.

The post Why AI is Making Human Sales Skills More Valuable Than Ever appeared first on Robin Lines Associates.

So how can businesses improve their margins without alienating their customers? It starts with reframing how you position value, engaging in consultative selling, and mastering price negotiation.

Positioning Value: Why Customers Buy More Than Just a Product

It’s tempting to think of pricing as a numbers game—costs go up, prices must follow. But effective pricing isn’t just about covering expenses; it’s about ensuring your customers understand what they’re paying for. And that means positioning your value clearly.

Consider your unique selling points. What differentiates you from your competitors? Whether it’s the quality of your product, exceptional service, or long-term benefits, make these advantages a central part of your conversation. Customers are more likely to accept higher prices if they see clear value in what you offer.

For instance, if you’re an energy supplier with rising costs, frame your pricing in terms of reliability, sustainability, or expertise in helping customers manage their energy usage. It’s not just about what they pay—it’s about what they gain.

Consultative Selling: Selling Solutions, Not Products

Traditional selling often focuses on promoting features and benefits. But in a market squeezed by economic pressures, consultative selling—a customer-first approach—can set you apart. This technique shifts the focus from selling a product to solving a problem.

Start by asking questions. What challenges is your customer facing, and how can your product or service alleviate those pain points? For example, a retailer struggling with high energy bills may benefit from tailored advice on efficient systems or budget-friendly payment plans.

By understanding your customer’s needs, you’re not just selling a product—you’re offering a solution. This approach builds trust, strengthens relationships, and makes your price point easier to justify.

Mastering Price Negotiation: Confidence and Clarity Are Key

Negotiating price increases can feel daunting, especially when your customers are also feeling the pinch. The secret? Confidence. If you believe in the value of your offering, your customers will too.

Be prepared to explain why your prices are changing. Transparency is vital. Share how rising energy or rental costs impact your business, but don’t stop there—pivot back to the value you bring. Emphasise how your product or service helps them achieve their goals despite external pressures.

Be assertive, but flexible. Have a clear pricing structure but be ready to explore options like tiered pricing, additional services, or bundling. This demonstrates your willingness to collaborate without compromising the value you deliver.

Improving Margins Without Losing Customers

Beyond adjusting prices, improving margins often requires a combination of small, strategic moves. Here are some practical tips:

1. Streamline Operations: Look for inefficiencies in your processes. Cutting waste saves costs without affecting quality.
2. Upsell and Cross-Sell: Introduce complementary products or premium options to increase the value of each sale.
3. Focus on Retention: It’s cheaper to keep an existing customer than acquire a new one. Offer loyalty incentives to maintain your client base.
4. Train Your Team: Equip your sales team with the tools to communicate value effectively. Confident teams can make a significant difference in how customers perceive your pricing.

How Robin Lines Associates Can Help

At Robin Lines Associates, we understand the challenges businesses face in communicating value and pricing assertively. That’s why we offer our Value-Based Programme for both buyers and sellers.

This tailored programme helps your team:

• Recognise and articulate the true value of your products or services.
• Approach sales with confidence, understanding how to position value in every conversation.
• Negotiate prices assertively, ensuring you maintain margins while meeting customer expectations.

With the right training and mindset, your business can weather rising costs without compromising on profitability or customer satisfaction.

Final Thoughts

Pricing under pressure doesn’t have to be a battle. By focusing on value, adopting consultative selling, and sharpening your negotiation skills, you can protect your margins while continuing to serve your customers effectively. And with support from Robin Lines Associates, your team will be ready to tackle these challenges head-on.

If you’d like to learn more about our Value-Based Programme and how it can benefit your business, get in touch today. Together, we’ll make pricing confidently your new standard.

The post Navigating Value and Pricing While Under Pressure appeared first on Robin Lines Associates.

1. Research Your Prospect Thoroughly

Begin by understanding the prospect’s business, challenges, and key personnel. This isn’t just about impressing them with your knowledge; it’s about tailoring your approach. If you know their industry trends, recent achievements, or potential pain points, you’re far more likely to make a compelling case for a face-to-face conversation. Show them you’re serious and prepared.

2. Offer Tangible Value Right Away

Instead of a vague “let’s meet to discuss how we can help,” specify how your expertise could address their needs. If, for example, you’ve identified a gap or an opportunity specific to their sector, reference it directly and frame your meeting as an opportunity to share insights that benefit them. Prospects are more likely to meet if they see clear, practical value on the table.

3. Use Warm Introductions Wherever Possible

Introductions from mutual contacts or connections make a significant difference in gaining traction. Leveraging shared connections builds initial trust, signalling that others in their network value your insight. If you lack a direct contact, try connecting with key industry figures in your network to establish a pathway. People are generally more receptive to meeting if there’s an element of familiarity.

4. Be Genuine and Personable

Many decision-makers receive multiple meeting requests daily, so stand out by being personable. Avoid sounding too “salesy” or formulaic—this can feel insincere. Instead, aim for genuine interest in their business goals and a sense of shared purpose. Mention something personal or noteworthy about their organisation; showing you’ve taken an interest in them personally makes your invitation more appealing.

5. Emphasise Flexibility and Convenience

Offer to work around their schedule and, if necessary, meet at a convenient location or a time that suits them. This flexibility can ease any reluctance. You might also offer options: “We could meet over coffee, or I’m happy to visit your office—whatever is easiest for you.” Flexibility shows respect for their time and willingness to make their life easier.

6. Follow Up Thoughtfully

A well-timed follow-up can be the difference between a “yes” and a missed opportunity. Be patient but proactive. If they’re slow to respond, don’t press too hard. Instead, send a polite follow-up highlighting a recent development or new insight that reinforces your value. Show you’re not only persistent but also constantly looking for ways to add value to the meeting.

7. Use Engaging Stories or Case Studies

When appropriate, briefly mention a relevant success story or case study to highlight how others have benefitted from similar meetings with you. Avoid lengthy explanations—instead, make it concise and relatable to their industry or situation. If they can envision similar benefits, they’re more likely to grant you a meeting.

8. Express Your Interest in Their Insights

Show that the meeting isn’t just about your pitch; you’re genuinely interested in understanding their perspective. This makes the meeting feel like a collaborative session rather than a one-sided sales push. Prospects often appreciate when you’re open to learning about their unique challenges, and this approach positions you as a partner rather than just a vendor.

Securing a face-to-face meeting takes more than just a polite request; it’s about presenting yourself as a partner who brings immediate value, personalised insights, and genuine interest in their business. With careful preparation, a human approach, and persistence, you’ll build the rapport and trust needed to secure those all-important face-to-face connections.

The post How to Secure Those Crucial Face-to-Face Meetings appeared first on Robin Lines Associates.

In today’s competitive business landscape, organisations are constantly seeking ways to give their sales teams an edge. One powerful tool that has emerged in recent years is personality profiling. By investing in personality profiles for your team members, you can equip them with the insights they need to better understand their customers, suppliers, and colleagues, ultimately leading to improved communication, stronger relationships, and increased sales.

At Robin Lines Associates, we’ve seen firsthand the transformative impact that personality profiles can have on sales performance. Our tailored profiles provide salespeople with a deep understanding of their own personality traits and how they interact with others. This self-awareness is crucial for adapting their approach to different personality types, allowing them to build genuine connections and establish trust more effectively.

Effective Communication and Personalisation

One of the key benefits of personality profiles is that they enable salespeople to communicate in a way that resonates with each individual. By recognising the unique preferences and communication styles of their prospects and clients, salespeople can tailor their language, tone, and even their body language to create a more engaging and persuasive dialogue. This level of personalisation not only demonstrates empathy and understanding but also helps to break down barriers and foster a sense of rapport.

Aligning with Customer Needs and Motivations

Moreover, personality profiles can provide valuable insights into what motivates and influences different personality types. Armed with this knowledge, salespeople can adapt their sales pitches and value propositions to align with the specific needs, goals, and aspirations of each customer. By speaking directly to what matters most to them, salespeople can create a more compelling case for their products or services, increasing the likelihood of a successful sale.

Enhancing Team Dynamics and Performance

Beyond individual sales interactions, personality profiles can also contribute to the overall cohesion and effectiveness of your sales team. By understanding the diverse personality types within the team, managers can optimise team dynamics, assign roles and responsibilities that play to each person’s strengths, and facilitate more productive collaboration. This not only enhances team performance but also creates a more positive and supportive work environment where every team member feels valued and empowered to succeed.

A Long-Term Strategy for Success

Investing in personality profiles for your sales team is not just a short-term tactic; it’s a long-term strategy for sustainable growth and success. By equipping your people with the tools and insights they need to build stronger relationships, communicate more effectively, and close more deals, you’re not only boosting your bottom line but also creating a culture of continuous learning and development.

Transform Your Sales Performance with RLA

At RLA, we’ve developed a proven personality profiling system that has helped countless organisations transform their sales performance. Our expert consultants work closely with your team to deliver personalised profiles, along with targeted training and support to ensure that your people can translate these insights into tangible results.

Don’t let your sales team struggle with one-size-fits-all approaches. Empower them with the power of personality profiles and watch as they unlock their full potential. Contact us today to learn more about how our personality profiling services can help your organisation achieve its sales goals and drive lasting success.

The post Unlock Sales Success with Personality Profiles: Empowering Your Team to Connect, Communicate, and Close appeared first on Robin Lines Associates.

For organisations that aren’t used to selling directly to C-Level, this poses new challenges. A typical scripted sales pitch is very unlikely to garner interest from top-level executives, and an ill-judged pitch can create an irrevocably negative view of your business.

We’ve prepared some valuable tips for selling to C-Level.

Personalise Your Pitch

C-Level Executives aren’t interested in listening to the pitch you’ve reeled off a hundred times before. They want to know what you can do for their business, and consequently, you need to research and understand their business in detail.

Focusing on broader business value propositions, and demonstrating an understanding of market conditions, competitors, USPs, and pain points will be more likely to resonate with executives than a generic pitch you could give to a dozen other prospects without changing a word.

Target the Right Executive

While researching the prospect, you must ensure that you have identified the right executive to target with your pitch. Multiple executives are likely to have decision-making responsibilities, and you’ll want to pitch to the person most closely involved with the area of their business your offer is likely to benefit.

Take the time to understand the corporate structure, the history of the business, and notable past decisions. Reach out to contacts you may have in the prospect already and try and get an insider’s perspective. If you have contacts in the business already, then you may also be able to ask for a referral which may carry a little more weight than a cold call.

Their Time is Money

C-Level decision-makers are busy people, and they’re not afraid to cut a pitch short if they’re failing to see the value. While an overly rehearsed pitch is a red flag to an executive, so too is a pitch that fails to concisely communicate the value in your offer.

You need to identify the key points and be able to build a compelling case for your offering in as little time as possible and, ideally, considerably less time than they’ve scheduled for your meeting. Even if you don’t win the business that day, demonstrating respect for their time and schedule may earn you a level of goodwill that will make future sales opportunities easier to come by.

Save the Small Talk for the Walk to the Elevator

Typical sales pitches begin with small talk, but C-Level often prefer that you get straight to the point. To build rapport with C-Level, focus more on their business. You can ask them about their company and any recent developments and use this as an opportunity to demonstrate your understanding and interest in their perspective.

Have a Call to Action

We’ve all been in a situation where we think we’ve locked down the sale, only for radio silence to follow. This doesn’t always mean that the other party isn’t interested, but it does mean that they’re not excited about the opportunity. Assessing the interest levels of a prospect based on a single meeting can be very difficult, and salespeople are often reluctant to pursue so as not to seem pushy.

To truly gauge the interest of a C-Level executive, it is best to have a call-to-action prepared; something specific the executive should do to move things forward. If they do it, and quickly, then you know they’re very interested, but if not, then you know that their interest levels aren’t particularly high. This isn’t a sign that you should quit, but it is something to keep in mind when strategising how best to follow up.

Build Support Within the Organisation

If you have contacts within the prospect organisation already, then you potentially have champions within the organisation who can speak up on your behalf. The majority of sales decisions are made when the salesperson isn’t in the room, so garnering support at various levels of the organisation can be a significant boon and help tip the scales in your favour.

The post Selling to C-Level appeared first on Robin Lines Associates.

Unfortunately, while email is easy, and virtual meetings certainly have their place, salespeople who don’t push to meet clients in-person may fail to build key relationships, lose valuable insights, and perhaps even become a little bit lazy. There are several significant reasons for salespeople to step away from the comfort of virtual meetings and make contact with customers directly.

Building Relationships

People like to do business with people like them. For the longest time, one of the critical tools in the salesperson’s kit was the ability to connect with customers on a personal level. Finding common ground, demonstrating understanding, and even sharing experiences helped build client trust. While it’s not impossible to develop key relationships over a video call, the nature of such calls leans towards brevity.

The formal nature of such meetings skips past the pre-meeting chit-chat, the conversations over coffee, and the post-meeting walk to the elevator. People expect video calls to be concise and, consequently, purely a business talk or presentation with little leeway for those organic interactions that help foster a sense of personal connection. A sale boils down to hard numbers when everything is purely business, whereas the personal touch can overcome obstacles such as slight variances in fees.

Gather Insights

A considerable advantage to face-to-face meetings is the ability to gather insights into the customer. Those coffee-break chats and walks to the elevator often result in the salesperson being furnished with a bit of extra information that they might not have otherwise received. When people are at ease, they’re a little less guarded and more inclined to offer information that could help the salesperson spot further gaps in the client’s business.

Identifying gaps is crucial to developing a relationship beyond a mere sale or two. It offers opportunities to cross-sell, upsell, find further pain points, and provide even more solutions. Salespeople should aim to be more than just a point-of-contact on a single project, but a trusted partner who can add value above and beyond the initial sale.

Become a Contact Point

Trust isn’t built at a distance. Many people can’t even remember the salesperson’s name a few weeks after the sale is complete. As a result, when they need something else, they’re more inclined to shop around, which risks them taking their business to a competitor next time. However, when they’ve met you, like you, and they have your card, they now have a direct line back into your business, which essentially offers you the first chance to do business with them again.

Furthermore, by offering them a direct line into your business, you can start building more direct lines into theirs. By adopting a team-selling approach, you can create links between different departments and organisations which will give you a considerable advantage over competitors in the future, particularly when looking to identify potential key accounts.

Proactivity With a Purpose

Cold calling is a necessary evil in business. None of us is particularly fond of receiving cold calls, but we understand that sometimes we have to make them, and sometimes we have to receive them. We also understand that when we’re making them, the success rate is very low. For every hundred calls we make, we’re lucky to get five leads and even luckier if we can close two or three of them.

Part of the reason cold calls fail so often is that people simply don’t trust them. Consequently, if you reach out to a past client who only knows you from a fifteen-minute video call or a brief email exchange, you’ll struggle a lot more with the call than if you reach out to someone whose hand you’ve shaken and with whom you’ve shared a coffee or a joke.

You might not get the sale each and every time, but your calls are much less likely to be dismissed as just another cold call. They’re much more likely to be taken seriously, considered genuine, and even when unsuccessful, to give you a few extra crucial minutes that you likely wouldn’t have otherwise had.

While the days of travelling salespeople popping in for a cuppa and a chat might have passed, the importance of these direct interactions hasn’t changed. Salespeople need to meet people, they need to get facetime with key decision makers, they need to gain valuable insights into customers, and they need to position themselves as trusted advisors.

Salespeople who are content to sit behind a desk all day, waiting for customers to call them, or sending out a hundred unsolicited messages trying to arrange a call are, in the long term, going to be left behind by those salespeople who still understand that business is actually personal.

The post Why Salespeople Need to Pursue Face-to-Face Meetings appeared first on Robin Lines Associates.

Therefore, it’s important not to simply communicate price increases as a regrettable response to inflation. Doing so only makes the customer feel that you’re not taking their situation or concerns into account. Instead, you should be open to communicating openly about the situation while empathising with theirs.

Understand What Your Customer Values

It helps to understand why your customer is your customer, and not somebody else’s customer. Value, after all, isn’t easily defined, and certainly not by the seller. Ultimately, the customer defines value so it’s vital that you uncover what the customers needs and wants truly are. Asking open-ended questions and listening can help you solve the value mystery.

Building the Value

Once you’ve uncovered what the customer truly values, you should be able to communicate how your new pricing structure will continue to benefit the customer. Since most buying decisions are made emotionally, and then justified with logic after the fact, it may be useful to use the ‘Feel, Felt, Found’ approach. Communicate that you understand how they feel, paint a picture of how other customers felt the same way, and then explain how they found the situation worked for them.

Be Assertive but Keep the Customer Happy

Your salespeople should keep in mind that any discussion over price can be taken as an offer to negotiate. Therefore, it’s important that your salespeople use language that doesn’t leave an opening for a counteroffer, and instead limits any wiggle room to alternative product or service options of a different scope. It can often be beneficial to offer multiple options to a customer, as studies have demonstrated that customers are more likely to buy when a range of solutions are presented to them.

If You Must Negotiate…

Sometimes, you will have no choice but to negotiate but you should do so from a position of knowledge. Gain an understanding of how your customer sees your products/services, and ensure your salespeople are aware of alternatives in the market. Tailor any proposition around your USPs, and if you must concede on price, look for concessions from the customer. Try and identify negotiable variables; items which are high value to you, but low cost to the customer and vice versa, and always be prepared to say that if the price must decrease, then the scope or spec of the product/service must change accordingly.

The post Communicating Price Increases to Customers appeared first on Robin Lines Associates.

You find a consultancy, discuss your needs, agree on a programme, invest time and money, skill your people up, and see an instant result. It all seems to have been a worthwhile investment!

But then you start to notice the sales figures dropping. Perhaps you put it down to a temporary blip? After all, we all go through periods where our sales numbers drop a bit. Unfortunately, six months later, you’re back to pre-programme levels and no sign of them improving.

What’s going on?

A Lack of Internal Support

Too many businesses assume that they can bring in a consultant to deliver a programme and everything will be taken care of for them. However, when the consultant leaves, who is going to ensure your team don’t slip back into old habits?

Successful sales training programmes always involve internal support. Some companies, for example, will appoint Ambassadors who work with the consultant on the preparation, design and delivery, and most importantly, post-programme review and analysis. They’ll conduct appraisals and evaluations throughout the programme, as well as post-training reviews to ensure that skills aren’t being forgotten.

Involving Ambassadors in preparation and design also ensures that your sales training programme is relevant to your industry and market. An off-the-shelf, one-size-fits-all training programme is little different to buying a dozen copies of a random sales book on Amazon and handing them out to your team. The information won’t be entirely useless, but it won’t be as relevant as it could have been. That relevance can significantly improve your margins.

Expecting Standalone Programmes to Work

We learn through repetition, just as we maintain and grow our skills through repetition. Roger Federer and Serena Williams didn’t win Wimbledon once and figure they never needed to train again to stay on top. They trained almost every day because even if you’re a prodigy in a given field, you still need to practice and hone your skills as much as you can.

When a company books a one-off training programme, they might see a quick result, but without the support in place to ensure continued development, it’s akin to someone learning how to do something in Photoshop once and expecting to remember how to do it forever.

Ideally, although more costly, sales training programmes should take the form of an academy or multi-session programme with review sessions and linked modules. The academy approach doesn’t just teach new skills with each module, but it embeds and reinforces previously learned skills by offering a wider variety of applications.

A Failure to Supplement the Programme

The most effective sales training programmes make use of a variety of supplemental materials to help embed and reinforce the learning outcomes. This can take the form of surveys, quizzes, bespoke short-form videos, reading lists, and follow-up sessions.

Some organisations we’ve worked with have even embedded the training materials into their own Learner Management System (LMS) used by E-Learning platforms such as ours to provide their people with easy access to refresh their memories. By combining such an approach with regular reviews, leaders can be assured that their people are actively engaging with the training months, even years, after the final module.

Too Much Theory

We’re realistic, many people approach training with a “Do we really have to?” mentality. Nobody really wants to be stuck in a room being lectured on how to do their job better. Often leaders don’t appreciate the importance of querying prospective coaches on what approach they favour, and this can lead to serious disappointment with the outcomes. People shouldn’t be bored when learning something because if they are, they’ll switch off.

When we deliver a training programme, we want to ensure that every delegate gains something from the session, and keeping people engaged is paramount. To this end, we favour a mix of theory, practical exercises, role-plays, case studies, discussion, online polling using tools such as Mentimeter, brainstorming, word clouds, and other visual aids.

An investment in sales training shouldn’t be a risk. Finding the right coach, developing the right programme, and working with your consultant to cover all the bases is the best way to ensure that you don’t join the many organisations with buyer’s remorse.

If you’re interested in what we might be able to do for your business, check out our Sales Training page, or Get in Touch!

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